 Coming out of last year's annual conference, the planning team asked for your feedback about what you liked about the event and what could be done better. A theme that emerged in your responses was how we address and handle legislative items, like resolutions. Letting surprise any of us, but hearing your specific concerns and ideas helped us evaluate our process, research what's working in other annual conferences, and imagine a new way of doing things for annual conference 2023. We heard you asking for more time dedicated to resolutions, for more information as you're asked to vote on resolutions, and for the opportunity to ask questions and hear thoughtful answers. We know that resolutions considered at our annual conference can be a powerful means to further God's work in North Texas. Ensuring that we have ample time and information to do this work well is critically important. We also heard a cry for more efficiency in the way we use our time together. For good collaboration and refinement to happen before a resolution is brought to the floor whenever possible. Our time together annual conference is precious and we want to ensure that the resolutions you're reviewing are strong and have already received input from impacted groups and stakeholders. When we sat down to brainstorm adjustments for 2023, our discussions were initially around tweaks to the process, how we could change the schedule or communication tools to incrementally improve the way we do this work. But as we kept coming back to the real challenge, how to increase the amount of dedicated time, the amount of information available, and the efficiency that we bring to this process, we understood that to make the changes our conference needs, we would have to completely reimagine our legislative process. When we stepped away from how we've always done things to consider something truly new, we landed on legislative committees as a new model to try in 2023. Under this new process, we will dedicate time on Monday afternoon to these small legislative committees. Each committee will include a convener, a parliamentarian, the author or authors of the resolution, as well as a mix of clergy and laity that we hope will represent diversity in thought and in voice. Together they will discuss and refine the resolution, possibly suggesting amendments. Following these sessions, each of the authors will still present their resolution to the floor, as they've done in the past. But following this presentation, the convener of the particular legislative committee that worked with that item will have a chance to make a brief report. This report could be a neutral statement, or it could be a statement for or against the resolution, depending on the conversation and consensus of the committee. Any member of the annual conference can participate in a legislative committee. If you'd like to participate, you'll be able to indicate your interest when you register for annual conference starting the week of April 24th. You won't be able to choose exactly which resolution you'll work on, but you will have an opportunity to rank your interests a few weeks before annual conference. From there, the legislative committee team will review the pool of interested attendees and your ranked interests and build out balanced legislative committees to set the stage for good conversation and collaboration. It's our intention that anyone with a passion for this work will be able to participate and contribute on a legislative committee, but we will have to operate within real space limitations. We can't overfill a room or crowd out voices at the table. We know this won't be a first come first serve situation. It's a bit more art than science as each committee should reflect a diversity of thought, but we're going to do our best to find a place for everyone. As a planning team, we like that legislative committees have the potential to address all three issues we were trying to solve when handling resolutions this year. They'll give us more time for work on resolutions at annual conference. They'll allow for more substantive two-way conversation around resolutions, and they'll bring informed efficiency to the work of the gathered body. We know that this solution isn't a perfect one. No process is. But we also know that this model is working for annual conferences across the country, and it resembles the way legislation is handled at general conference. More importantly, we have confidence that this change will be a step in the right direction. We're looking forward to seeing how this change plays out and continuing to incorporate your feedback as we learn together how best to engage in holy conferencing at our annual conference. Blessings, and we look forward to seeing you in June.